Sales and Marketing

Mapping out the key consumer touchpoints agents need to address.
The Customer Experience Work Group was formed to help agents understand various technology-related touch points insurance consumers experience across the “phases” of their insurance journey – Discover, Evaluate, Purchase, Experience, Renew/Leave and Advocacy Choice. The group worked to identify all potential touch points within each phase, and create recommendations for agent use.

WA-based Independent Agent Claudia McClain discusses her agency’s use of blending technology and marketing to ‘win’ locally - with both consumers and her customers. Claudia discusses her strategies around community involvement, and how this integrates with automating her agency’s online & social presence with their management system. Claudia’s agency leverages industry resources, and also consistently uses process review to proactively implement ‘lessons learned’. The McClain Insurance Services agency’s results for retention rate, Net Promoter Score, and community involvement are a great example of what can be gained from direct writers by effective local action (or potentially lost by inaction).

Cheney Insurance is taking advantage of available technology; is constantly learning as a result of its participation in an agency cluster and its agents association; and has gained invaluable expertise and tools by investing in the services of a digital marketing firm. This innovation is driving agency growth to new levels.

About this article: Agencies have a great opportunity to build upon the local footprint they have developed using traditional methods by adding digital components to their marketing plans. This article outlines three powerful online marketing strategies that agencies can employ at little or no cost to extend the strong local presence they have developed to online prospects. Carriers, too, have developed tools to help agencies understand and implement these online tools.

Generating a profitable, high-margin book of business requires a balanced approach to marketing and sales – built on processes that are sustained over the long haul. Steve lays out how an agency can achieve such a successful marketing and sales process that is both high-touch and high-tech.

Cut through the hype about social media to get some easy to follow, practical tips on building an effective digital brand that is integrated into your agency’s overall marketing plan. Relationships increasingly have a digital component and learning to effectively use these tools can enhance your offline relationships and build your agency brand.

About this article: Recent research offers invaluable insights about what drives personal lines consumers to choose particular providers for insurance, what’s important to them in making their decisions and how they want their insurance providers to interact with them. This article pulls relevant consumer data from five different studies and then outlines how independent agencies might use this data to enhance their personal lines operations and strategies to attract and retain today’s changing consumer and compete effectively with the direct carriers and others.

Chuck Blondino, Safeco Insurance, conducted research as to what differentiates high growth agencies from those growing minimally if at all, and found a key differentiator is that high growth agencies track and act upon key metrics relating to the origins of their business, close ratios, revenue and policies per client, retention and average client tenure. Based upon his research, the author outlines the twelve key metrics agencies should track to maximize their marketing and sales efforts, as well as how to generate these metrics. Chuck makes a very convincing case that an agency can’t optimize its growth, if it doesn’t have the facts as to where its business is coming from and which marketing efforts and referral sources are generating the highest return.

Independent agents can provide the online auto insurance shopper with a better value proposition than the direct carriers and thereby take personal lines business from them. Independent agents now have the technology tools available to write personal lines profitably and to increase their visibility online so that they can be found by online shoppers. Recent consumer research also bolsters the opportunity independent agents have to attract online shoppers—most online shoppers continue to buy offline from a local agent; consumers using agents highly value their agent; and consumers using local agents have a higher degree of loyalty to their current insurance provider.

Every one of us wants to find more ways to earn new clients, write more policies, and generate new revenue. Our agency has found that centralizing the storage of all prospect data in our agency management system has had a dramatic impact on converting these prospects into clients, as well as on using real-time rating and issuance most effectively.

No longer must independent agents walk the street, knocking on doors, to uncover prospects. Today, agents rely on referrals, of course, and networking. But when that doesn’t cut it, or when more aggressive marketing is called for, where can agents turn?

As I travel on behalf of the Agents Council for Technology (ACT), I’m heartened by the positive comments from agents and brokers who recognize the good work our volunteers are doing. Interest in our work on real-time transactions and other issues critical to boosting agency efficiency through technology is strong. Equally intense is a hunger for more information and resources to help agency principals move their own operations forward in the quest for technology-based performance gains.

This report outlines how agents and brokers are using technology to enhance their marketing, sales, and sales management activities. The focus is on the functions being enhanced with technology, not on specific products or vendors.

If you’re like most of us, the first thing you do today when you want to find out about a particular service or product is to search for it on the Internet. This simple fact should be sufficient to cause independent agents and brokers to radically rethink how their agency markets for new customers, and yet most have not done so. Take this simple test. “Google” for a particular type of insurance in your community, or for an insurance agent. Does your agency show up?